I should also say at the beginning of this rant that I understand some people using Ancestry.com are new to genealogy, and that they sometimes make mistakes that people with more experience learned to avoid a long time ago.
All that said, it still drives me crazy when people lift information or pictures off my tree and use them on their own trees in a way that is incorrect or in a way that doesn't fit their tree at all. Some people want to know if they have made a mistake and will correct information that they have incorrectly understood and or used, and some are not interested in making corrections at all.
Here is just one example of things that make me crazy when I see them at Ancestry.
The same or similar name mistake:
A member ( I hesitate to call her a family historian or genealogist, both of which imply she knows something about what she's doing) at Ancestry.com has a woman on her tree named Dortha E Jones with a birth date given as 8 Aug 1909. She shows as proof a birth record for someone named Dorothy E. Quebbeman, born in Knox County Indiana with parents Wm and Atta (Hendricks) Quebbeman. Yet on the tree she is showing parents for Dorotha Jones as being Walter E. Jones and Mary J. Jones. That's where I come into the picture. Mary J. Jones was Mary J. Robinson and she was a first cousin of my grandfather and they did have a daughter named Dorothy Fay Jones. So.....who the hell is person on the birth certificate? In trying to read between the lines of that tree I see she has Dortha married to Harley G. Jones. Is Dortha who married Harley the same as Dorothy Quebbeman? Can't really tell by looking at her tree...I think so, maybe.
Some of that confusion would be eliminated if people would please use the maiden name of women when entering them on a tree...it's much less confusing for everyone involved. I can't tell if the woman who married Harley G. Jones was actually Dorthey E. Quebbeman or someone named Dortha E. Jones.
Ancestry.com really should require or at least encourage maiden names be used if known for all females on all trees. This example gets worse, the tree owner has uploaded census records for the Walter E. Jones family which does include a daughter named Dorthy Fay Jones....and also census records for Dortha after her marriage to Harley Jones. It seems clear, based on census records that the Dortha who married Harley is not the same Dorothy Jones who was the daughter of Walter and Mary. What seems to have happened is the records for two different women of similar names have been blended, leaving anyone looking at the tree very confused. It's a good example of one of those "same name" problems but by no means is this a rare mistake at Ancestry. For some reason a lot of people building family trees can't get past the fact that it is not only possible, but probable that a lot of people have the same names and even the same or similar years of birth and death. I've done a couple of Google searches on my own name, Quentin Robinson.......there are a lot of us and I used to think it was a somewhat unique name. Imagine how many Jane Smith's there have been!
Some time ago I found another Ancestry user taking a lot of my Robinson photographs and information from my tree and got kind of excited, thinking I had found a long lost cousin. Then I started looking at her tree and her connection to my tree which was with someone named Sarah Robinson. She had an ancestor named Sarah Robinson who was born in PA. who married Asa Sprague and died in 1837 Orleans County New York. I had a Sarah Robinson on my tree born about the same time, but born in Ohio. The Sarah on my tree was a daughter of Richard and Ann Mary Robinson and was married to William Wilson McLaughlin and she died in 1832 in Ohio at a fairly young age after giving birth to 4 children. The other Ancestry user had "adopted" the Sarah on my tree as her own Sarah. Well heck, the name is the same, it MUST BE the same person, right? I contacted her and sent her the marriage record for Sarah and William W. McLaughlin, explained where that Sarah was born, and how I knew that information with source material...thinking she'd want to correct her tree, or maybe ask me for additional information. WRONG...not interested in correcting her tree at all and she essentially told me to mind my own damn business and that even if her tree was wrong it wasn't hurting anything because no one cares, and no one looks at it anyhow and it is her tree, not my tree, who appointed me as the tree police, and to leave her alone. (I left out all the expletives she spiced it up with)
I recently looked at her tree again a couple years later it has grown to well over 20,000 names. I guess it's pretty easy to build a big tree when you just start lifting whole branches off other trees and just plugging them in wherever the hell you want on your own tree. The woman had absolutely no concept why her use of my Sarah Robinson's family on her tree, showing a different husband, different kids, different death date and location might be of any concern at all to me. Maybe what ticked her off was the idea that if she had to give up Sarah's family off my tree then she'd loose a few hundred good names that went with Sarah and I guess if you are going for numbers then that would be a hard hit. Maybe she couldn't face the fact that if she removed my Robinson's from her tree that would leave her with a dead end for her Sarah, or maybe she's just a crazy bat. Quantity over quality....he (or she) who gets the most names on a tree wins. What horse shit!!! Sadly it appears the woman has accumulated a lot of other mistakes on her tree besides the wrong Robinson family attached to her Sarah. What she, and maybe a lot of people don't understand is that the information they post on those trees is likely to be around for a very long time, and at some point some innocent newby is going to be looking at those trees and will have no idea how inaccurate they are. Those inaccuracies will just be perpetuated long into the future.
Believe me...a lot of information gets copied from tree to tree to tree because people see something that looks like it MIGHT fit and just plug it in without any additional proof....and sometimes what gets copied is so absurd I think my elementary school age grandkids could probably catch it as wrong. I've seen children listed on trees with birth dates that are years after the parent died....or at a date when the mother would have been 5 years old. (That would have been a newsworthy event I imagine)
Often locations of events like birth, death, or marriage don't make any sense either. If a family was living in Ohio in 1830 why would anyone believe one of their children was born in Germany in 1835 when all the other children of the family were born in Ohio? Another example of the "same name" issue. The Ohio family had a son Benjamin, and a family in Germany also had a son Benjamin..."must be the same guy". Doesn't it seem unlikely that a family living in Ohio in 1835, made up of a husband born in Maryland and a wife born in Virginia, having a dozen kids all born in Ohio have one child born in Germany? Could that happen, sure it could, is it likely, not on your life. Just because you know your great great grandfather was named Benjamin and that he was born in Germany and you find another family of the same surname with a son named Benjamin IT DOES NOT MEAN YOUR GREAT GREAT GRANDFATHER AND THE OTHER ONE ARE THE SAME PERSON!
Here is another one that drives me nuts...my fourth great grandmother was Isabella Anderson Davisson. Born in Virginia in 1756 and married there but she and her husband and children migrated to Ohio about 1810 where they settled in Clark County and bought a farm. In 1818 and 1819 Isabella Davisson and her husband Isaac sell all their land in Clark County and she is not heard from again.
Isaac however is found soon after 1820 living in Johnson County Indiana where several of their children migrated about the time of the Ohio land sales. There is no census record or any other type of record indicating Isabella was still around after the land sale in Ohio. There are at least 22 family trees at Ancestry.com and a few actually give an exact date of death for her, however most use an estimated death date of 1819 or 1820. Sometimes when arriving at a death date for early ancestors all you can do is estimate, but the craziest thing I find about her is that the majority of those 22 trees show her place of death as Indianola in Warren County Iowa. Not Ohio, not Indiana.
Now think about that for a minute. 1820.....what was going on in Iowa in 1820? I'll tell you what, not very damn much, that's what! Indiana was at the western edge of the frontier in 1820. What was going on with the rest of Isabella's family in 1820? Where were they? I'll tell you....not a one of them was in Iowa in 1820. None. Why would you think a woman of almost 70 years old would strike out and head west of the Mississippi in 1820 when her husband and all of her family was in either Ohio or Indiana? Did she run away from home, abandon her husband and family? If she did that then how did anyone back in Ohio and Indiana figure out that she made it as far as Indianola Iowa and how did anyone arrive at an exact date of death? Maybe someone telegraphed them? Maybe the health department in Indianola kept a record? Yes, I'm being snarky.
I once, as an experiment, contacted the owners of all 22 of those trees and asked them if they could provide any additional information about the death date or death location for Isabella Davisson...less than half even responded, but each of those ten people told me that they got the death date and Indianola Iowa place of death from another tree...I shook my head, thanked them and went on my way. In fairness, I have since that time corresponded with a few other Davisson descendants who have explained how they arrived at an estimated death date and location for Isabella... based on the land sales and based on a lack of census or other proof from Indiana they believe she probably died around 1820 either in Clark County, before Isaac moved west into Indiana, or she died in Johnson County Indiana not long after they moved there. Sometimes that is just about as accurate as you can get or should get.
Changing gears a bit. Below, selected at random, are a few of my favorite pictures from the family album.
Some of that confusion would be eliminated if people would please use the maiden name of women when entering them on a tree...it's much less confusing for everyone involved. I can't tell if the woman who married Harley G. Jones was actually Dorthey E. Quebbeman or someone named Dortha E. Jones.
Ancestry.com really should require or at least encourage maiden names be used if known for all females on all trees. This example gets worse, the tree owner has uploaded census records for the Walter E. Jones family which does include a daughter named Dorthy Fay Jones....and also census records for Dortha after her marriage to Harley Jones. It seems clear, based on census records that the Dortha who married Harley is not the same Dorothy Jones who was the daughter of Walter and Mary. What seems to have happened is the records for two different women of similar names have been blended, leaving anyone looking at the tree very confused. It's a good example of one of those "same name" problems but by no means is this a rare mistake at Ancestry. For some reason a lot of people building family trees can't get past the fact that it is not only possible, but probable that a lot of people have the same names and even the same or similar years of birth and death. I've done a couple of Google searches on my own name, Quentin Robinson.......there are a lot of us and I used to think it was a somewhat unique name. Imagine how many Jane Smith's there have been!
Some time ago I found another Ancestry user taking a lot of my Robinson photographs and information from my tree and got kind of excited, thinking I had found a long lost cousin. Then I started looking at her tree and her connection to my tree which was with someone named Sarah Robinson. She had an ancestor named Sarah Robinson who was born in PA. who married Asa Sprague and died in 1837 Orleans County New York. I had a Sarah Robinson on my tree born about the same time, but born in Ohio. The Sarah on my tree was a daughter of Richard and Ann Mary Robinson and was married to William Wilson McLaughlin and she died in 1832 in Ohio at a fairly young age after giving birth to 4 children. The other Ancestry user had "adopted" the Sarah on my tree as her own Sarah. Well heck, the name is the same, it MUST BE the same person, right? I contacted her and sent her the marriage record for Sarah and William W. McLaughlin, explained where that Sarah was born, and how I knew that information with source material...thinking she'd want to correct her tree, or maybe ask me for additional information. WRONG...not interested in correcting her tree at all and she essentially told me to mind my own damn business and that even if her tree was wrong it wasn't hurting anything because no one cares, and no one looks at it anyhow and it is her tree, not my tree, who appointed me as the tree police, and to leave her alone. (I left out all the expletives she spiced it up with)
I recently looked at her tree again a couple years later it has grown to well over 20,000 names. I guess it's pretty easy to build a big tree when you just start lifting whole branches off other trees and just plugging them in wherever the hell you want on your own tree. The woman had absolutely no concept why her use of my Sarah Robinson's family on her tree, showing a different husband, different kids, different death date and location might be of any concern at all to me. Maybe what ticked her off was the idea that if she had to give up Sarah's family off my tree then she'd loose a few hundred good names that went with Sarah and I guess if you are going for numbers then that would be a hard hit. Maybe she couldn't face the fact that if she removed my Robinson's from her tree that would leave her with a dead end for her Sarah, or maybe she's just a crazy bat. Quantity over quality....he (or she) who gets the most names on a tree wins. What horse shit!!! Sadly it appears the woman has accumulated a lot of other mistakes on her tree besides the wrong Robinson family attached to her Sarah. What she, and maybe a lot of people don't understand is that the information they post on those trees is likely to be around for a very long time, and at some point some innocent newby is going to be looking at those trees and will have no idea how inaccurate they are. Those inaccuracies will just be perpetuated long into the future.
Believe me...a lot of information gets copied from tree to tree to tree because people see something that looks like it MIGHT fit and just plug it in without any additional proof....and sometimes what gets copied is so absurd I think my elementary school age grandkids could probably catch it as wrong. I've seen children listed on trees with birth dates that are years after the parent died....or at a date when the mother would have been 5 years old. (That would have been a newsworthy event I imagine)
Often locations of events like birth, death, or marriage don't make any sense either. If a family was living in Ohio in 1830 why would anyone believe one of their children was born in Germany in 1835 when all the other children of the family were born in Ohio? Another example of the "same name" issue. The Ohio family had a son Benjamin, and a family in Germany also had a son Benjamin..."must be the same guy". Doesn't it seem unlikely that a family living in Ohio in 1835, made up of a husband born in Maryland and a wife born in Virginia, having a dozen kids all born in Ohio have one child born in Germany? Could that happen, sure it could, is it likely, not on your life. Just because you know your great great grandfather was named Benjamin and that he was born in Germany and you find another family of the same surname with a son named Benjamin IT DOES NOT MEAN YOUR GREAT GREAT GRANDFATHER AND THE OTHER ONE ARE THE SAME PERSON!
Here is another one that drives me nuts...my fourth great grandmother was Isabella Anderson Davisson. Born in Virginia in 1756 and married there but she and her husband and children migrated to Ohio about 1810 where they settled in Clark County and bought a farm. In 1818 and 1819 Isabella Davisson and her husband Isaac sell all their land in Clark County and she is not heard from again.
Isaac however is found soon after 1820 living in Johnson County Indiana where several of their children migrated about the time of the Ohio land sales. There is no census record or any other type of record indicating Isabella was still around after the land sale in Ohio. There are at least 22 family trees at Ancestry.com and a few actually give an exact date of death for her, however most use an estimated death date of 1819 or 1820. Sometimes when arriving at a death date for early ancestors all you can do is estimate, but the craziest thing I find about her is that the majority of those 22 trees show her place of death as Indianola in Warren County Iowa. Not Ohio, not Indiana.
Now think about that for a minute. 1820.....what was going on in Iowa in 1820? I'll tell you what, not very damn much, that's what! Indiana was at the western edge of the frontier in 1820. What was going on with the rest of Isabella's family in 1820? Where were they? I'll tell you....not a one of them was in Iowa in 1820. None. Why would you think a woman of almost 70 years old would strike out and head west of the Mississippi in 1820 when her husband and all of her family was in either Ohio or Indiana? Did she run away from home, abandon her husband and family? If she did that then how did anyone back in Ohio and Indiana figure out that she made it as far as Indianola Iowa and how did anyone arrive at an exact date of death? Maybe someone telegraphed them? Maybe the health department in Indianola kept a record? Yes, I'm being snarky.
I once, as an experiment, contacted the owners of all 22 of those trees and asked them if they could provide any additional information about the death date or death location for Isabella Davisson...less than half even responded, but each of those ten people told me that they got the death date and Indianola Iowa place of death from another tree...I shook my head, thanked them and went on my way. In fairness, I have since that time corresponded with a few other Davisson descendants who have explained how they arrived at an estimated death date and location for Isabella... based on the land sales and based on a lack of census or other proof from Indiana they believe she probably died around 1820 either in Clark County, before Isaac moved west into Indiana, or she died in Johnson County Indiana not long after they moved there. Sometimes that is just about as accurate as you can get or should get.
Changing gears a bit. Below, selected at random, are a few of my favorite pictures from the family album.
My grandma taught school here. Her dad, Edgar Ferguson standing by the hack.
The Painter family...my mother in law is the next to youngest child on left.
Can you imagine 16 siblings?
Can you imagine 16 siblings?
Great Grandpa Robinson's house in White County Indiana.
Hotel in Plymouth Nebraska owned by great-great grand Uncle John D. Robinson.
Home where I grew up....lots of memories there.
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